10 ways to boost employees’ motivation in training programs

Are you doing your part in ensuring your employees stay motivated? It’s no secret that maintaining employees’ motivation is vital to business success!

But how do we keep our employees motivated? By leveraging just a few simple techniques you can really help your employees to progress with their training, enhancing their own personal performance and, ultimately, supporting the business in delivering its objectives.

Here are 10 tips and techniques to help you boost your employees’ motivation during their training programs:

1 – Get social

Running an online learning community can create an open environment where students feel confident asking questions. Employees can use the community to motivate each other by sharing best practices and discussing their progress.

Organizing events such as an ‘English lunch’ for learners can also be a fun way to motivate employees. Provide some English delicacies to spark conversation – in English only of course!

2 – Keep things simple

Encourage employees to take it one step at a time. Concentrate on the current stage they’re working on and highlight any key learning milestones they’re close to. This way they’ll feel confident they’re making good progress without getting overwhelmed.

3 – Create a support network

Identify high performing learners and ask them to become official mentors. They can share their positive experiences with peers and provide additional motivation and support when required

Creating a support network comprising of team mentors or peers can provide learners with additional guidance and the chance to ask questions as their training progresses.

4 – Link a difficult task to a reward

Another important way to boost employee’s motivation is by looking at ways to reward your learners when they reach key milestones in their learning journey. This will help to instill a sense of achievement and motivate them to reach the next milestone.

Rewards could include small prizes for achieving learning milestones or a mini graduation ceremony where learners are presented with a certificate upon completion of their program.

5 – Schedule polite reminders

Sending regular training reminders and prompts will help your learners to stay on track.

It can be beneficial to tailor these messages depending on your learner’s behavior. For example, if a learner has not attended any conversation classes, you may wish to send them a message outlining the benefits of starting. You can also encourage them to get in touch if they have any questions or concerns.

6 – Link training with daily tasks and activities

Linking training to your employees’ day-to-day tasks and goals can help incentivize learning.

For example, they could think about how their studies will come in useful for upcoming meetings, conference calls or events.

7 – Assess progress

Organize regular catch-ups with employees and consider getting their supervisor involved too. That way they’ll be aware of what their employee has achieved and how to encourage the learner to reach their next training milestone.

8 – Incentivize your team

Incentivizing employees to reach specific goals or targets throughout the training program can be a great source of motivation. Incentives can include prizes, certificates or financial bonuses.

9 – Consider penalties

Penalties can be used to encourage staff to focus on completing their training, but we recommend these be used sparingly.

Creating a penalty structure which is overseen by line managers which includes performance reviews for low usage or missed targets can be an effective way to increase engagement.

10 – Provide reassurance

Some learners can find the jump between independent learning and joining a conversation class daunting.

Offering your learners reassurance can help make the jump less scary. One method would be to allow learners joining a conversation class for the first time to just listen into the class. This will enable them to familiarize themselves with the format and feel confident in future classes.

About the Corporate Training Blog

The Corporate Training Blog offers insights about the world of corporate training. We share our knowledge on the strategic importance of training, best practices, industry trends and some of the countless stories of how we change organisations around the world.

About EF Corporate Solutions

We are the world’s largest private education company with schools and offices in 50+ countries. Our unique, market-leading, full suite of language training programs all serve one purpose: to educate and develop people to their greatest potential. At EF, we train people to become better leaders and to communicate across diverse cultures. We help millions of students and thousands of businesses everywhere sell more, engage more, innovate more, talk to their customers more – and as a result grow more.